The Fate of One Who Tried to Possess Talent [Slate]

Reading "The Last Line Boy" through Hegel and Barthes

In Netflix's "The Last Line Boy," Heo Moon-oh (Choi Min-sik) is a failed writer and a professor of Korean literature. He discovers the genius of Lee Kang (Choi Hyun-wook), a student sitting in the very last row of the classroom, and begins a secret lesson with him. While it appears that the professor is the one choosing the student, the drama prompts viewers to question that premise. When Heo Moon-oh proposes this private literary class, Lee Kang responds, "Why? Do you like me?" He is neither a naive student nor a rebellious protégé. From the very beginning, the show hints that the power dynamic may not be what it seems.

Netflix's "The Last Line Boy" Still Cut.

Within the institution, Heo Moon-oh's position is clear. He evaluates students' assignments, discovers talent, and guides their writing. The language from the lectern has authority. He initially addresses Lee Kang as an educator, then increasingly as a protector. Lee Kang does not resist. Rather, he chooses words he knows Heo Moon-oh wants to hear and returns them. It may look like submission, but in reality, it is control. The era when institutional authority automatically translated into respect has ended. The more one leans on authority, the more fragile its foundation becomes. There is ample room for the power dynamic between these two to be reversed.

Interestingly, the root of this lies within Heo Moon-oh himself. He has not published a new work in 20 years. He has lived in the shadow of his successful peer Kim Soo-hoon (Heo Joon-ho), whose wife was once his first love. The German philosopher Hegel believed that human desire fundamentally seeks recognition from others. Self-consciousness cannot be confirmed without the recognition of another, and the struggle for recognition is not simply a power struggle but rather an existential struggle to have one's existence validated.

What Heo Moon-oh seeks from Lee Kang is not talent, but recognition itself. The moment he discovers Lee Kang's genius, his sense of educational mission becomes entangled with possessive impulses. By nurturing Lee Kang, he hopes to prove himself as someone with an exceptional eye for talent. The desire to gain recognition through possession is where the fissure begins. Lee Kang's writing aims directly at this gap.

Netflix's "The Last Line Boy" still cut.

French literary theorist Roland Barthes distinguished the effects of a text as "plaisir" (pleasure, the enjoyment that varies depending on how well cultural norms are embodied) and "jouissance" (bliss, a primal and fundamental enjoyment that transcends culture and norms). Heo Moon-oh's immersion in Lee Kang's writing is closer to the latter.

Barthes attributes such captivation to the "death of the author." In this conception, the meaning of a text is not completed by the author, but by the reader—because the reader actively projects their own desires, creating meaning. In Lee Kang's writing, Heo Moon-oh reads his younger self and lost possibilities. He believes he has discovered Lee Kang, but in reality, he is merely a reader projecting his own desire for recognition onto the text. The fact that Heo Moon-oh anxiously awaits Lee Kang's next piece, and at times even begs for it, is a natural consequence of this captivation.

But the drama does not stop there. It reveals that everything Lee Kang wrote was fiction. From the beginning, Lee Kang approached Heo Moon-oh out of a desire for revenge. The genius that Heo Moon-oh became obsessed with was a carefully constructed trap, and the text onto which he projected his desire for recognition never actually existed.

Netflix's still cut from The Last Line Boy.

In the end, what destroys Heo Moon-oh is his own desire. This is not just his story. The urge to discover, nurture, and claim others' talents as one's own operates constantly in classrooms, workplaces, and relationships. Heo Moon-oh demonstrates what remains when that desire is pushed to its most extreme. Whether it is power or talent, the moment one tries to possess it, one is inevitably consumed by it.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.